SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 11, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In its ongoing mission to bankrupt the business of fraud, Arkose Labs reported a record year, tackling fraud and online attacks head-on. The company analyzed more than 15 billion online sessions in 2020, stopped 4.6 billion attacks and wasted 40 million hours of fraudsters’ time.
Company Growth
Arkose Labs helped its customers navigate disruption and one of the downsides of the pandemic - a growth in online fraud. The company doubled its annual recurring revenue and brought on major brands like Honey, PayPal, CES and Minecraft as new customers across banking, fintech, ecommerce, digital media, gaming and technology.
Fueled by its 2020 series B funding round led by Microsoft’s Venture Fund, M12, with additional investments from PayPal and USVP, Arkose Labs focused on recruiting talent and investing in its technology to facilitate its significant growth.
Global Head of M12, Nagraj Kashyap noted, “Multiple Microsoft businesses are already benefiting from this innovative technology.” He added, “With Arkose’s end-to-end anti-fraud platform, enterprises across the globe can better protect against fraud and abuse long-term.”
The company doubled its headcount in 2020 and opened a UK office. It is committed to additional 2021 hires in North America, Australia and Europe. Key senior leadership hires included Mark Resnick (COO), Martyn McKean (CTO), Phil Steffora (CSO), Patrice Boffa (VP, Services), and Adrian Jenkins (VP, EMEA).
The Arkose Labs Fraud and Abuse Prevention Platform analyzed four times the amount of sessions in 2020 and saw transactions in 200+ countries. Its standout technology was recognized by Gartner, who named it a 2020 Cool Vendor in Fraud and IAM. The platform protects against automated and human-driven account takeover and new account fraud attempts; and an extensive list of abuse use cases such as inventory hoarding, web scraping, in-game abuse, carding, fake reviews and spam by eliminating malicious bot activity across digital platforms.
“2020 was one of the most testing times in our history. We are proud to have worked hand-in-hand with our customers, helping them navigate major fluctuations in consumer behavior and deal with fast-evolving fraud attacks,” said Kevin Gosschalk, CEO. “We have a clear mission at Arkose Labs to undermine the drivers of fraud, in order to make the world a safer place for end users and enable our customers to truly thrive in today’s digital-first world.”
Product Enhancements
2020 brought enhancements to product capabilities that improved the platform’s ability to sap fraudsters’ efficiency and deliver long-term protection against evolving attacks. Key product improvements included:
- Enhancement to detection and monitoring systems and a new protocol to deal with attacks from net new fingerprints.
- New machine learning capabilities to proactively identify emerging threats and leverage customer truth data.
- Extended market lead in core challenge technology with new puzzle types and greater flexibility theme and skin puzzles.
- Omni-device support expanded to Android TV, printers and gaming consoles such as the Xbox, with improved accessibility for WCAG 2.1 compliance.
- Improved data insights and new reporting dashboards via Arkose Labs’ customer portal.
- Single sign-on support for all major identity providers (Okta, Microsoft, Ping Identity, etc.).
- Significant investments to further the speed, scale, reliability and security of their core infrastructure.
“We are proud to have been a valuable partner in fraud and abuse prevention in such a fast-evolving environment. Our product enhancements have enabled our expanded customer base to better protect their digital properties. With more transactions going through the Arkose Labs network than ever before, we have seen great success in stopping attacks at scale,” Gosschalk added.
Building a Community
Throughout the pandemic, Arkose Labs went to great lengths to build an engaged virtual community. Hosting the inaugural Bankrupting Fraud Virtual Summit in November brought together more than 50 speakers and 1,500 attendees. The company also hosted regular virtual happy hours, enabling more than 250 security professionals across the globe to stay connected and candidly share challenges from the field.
“We are strongest when we are working together,” said Gosschalk. “While the pandemic made it impossible to share ideas under the same roof, we utilized virtual platforms to bring together the best and brightest in the industry during a time when insights and innovation in the cybersecurity space are needed more than ever.”
Arkose Labs also commissioned a survey into kids’ digital habits amid the COVID-19 lockdowns, that raised awareness of the importance of online safety for children (and parents) which was featured in the Wall Street Journal.
About Arkose Labs
Arkose Labs bankrupts the business model of fraud. Recognized by Gartner as a 2020 Cool Vendor, its innovative approach determines true user intent and remediates attacks in real time. Risk assessments combined with interactive authentication challenges undermine the ROI behind attacks, providing long-term protection while improving good customer throughput. Arkose Labs is based in San Francisco, with offices in Brisbane, Australia and London, United Kingdom. For more information, visit www.arkoselabs.com or on Twitter @ArkoseLabs.
Media Contact:
Paul Wilke
arkose@uprightcomms.com
+1-415-881-7995